


Keep It All the Year

by ThrillingDetectiveTales



Category: Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Advent Calendar, Christmas Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:07:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27890503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrillingDetectiveTales/pseuds/ThrillingDetectiveTales
Summary: Holden frowned and shook his head, chewing at his lower lip. “I just don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I’m following the recipe exactly as it’s written down, but the icing keeps ending up so wet it soaks through the cookies and turns them into mush.”Bill sighed, pushing up off the counter, and ambled over to where Holden was posted up in front of the sink. He pressed his palm to Holden’s back, dragging it in warm, slow strokes across his shoulderblades. “It’s a high school bake sale, baby. A couple of soggy sugar cookies aren’t the end of the world.”
Relationships: Holden Ford/Bill Tench
Comments: 12
Kudos: 29





	Keep It All the Year

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to write a series of Christmas- and winter-themed shorts, featuring our two favorite FBI profiling pioneers (and probably a host of other characters), because I need a pick-me-up this holiday season. I went with Christmas specifically because it’s what I was raised celebrating, and therefore I feel best equipped to represent it in fiction. I may or may not get one done for every day of December (including those few that have already passed), so please bear with me as we go on this journey together.
> 
> These ficlets are not beta read, are all very fluffy, and hopefully still fun to read even so!
> 
> This first chapter’s prompt was “baking,” featuring a look at a possible future for these nerds. Also, I think show!Nancy deserved better, so in this one she’s cool with her ex-husband being queer because period typical homophobia is so played out okay enjoy!
> 
> Title is from this Charles Dickens quote: “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”

**Fredericksburg, Virginia  
December 5, 1987**

Holden was bent over the kitchen sink, washing the evidence of his third failed attempt at royal icing out of a small plastic mixing bowl, when Bill’s familiar, brusque knock sounded at the front door. He glanced over his shoulder at the clock on the wall and swore under his breath when he saw the time. They had reservations at some fancy Italian restaurant downtown in half an hour, with plans to catch that new Steve Martin flick afterward. He craned his neck and hollered, “Just a minute!”

He urged the last, gooey dregs of icing down the drain with a sponge, not bothering to scrub up the bright streaks of red and green and snowy blue that stubbornly clung to the sides of the steel basin. He wrung the sponge out with a haphazard twist and rinsed his hands, quick and sloppy, patting them dry against his thighs as he strode into the narrow entryway.

He ran his fingers along his hairline, tucking a few stray strands back into place, and then twisted the lock and yanked the door open, sighing, “Sorry.”

Bill stood casually in the hall, looking smart in a black winter coat and dove grey plaid suit jacket over a turtleneck sweater, the muted, toasty orange of which made his pale eyes seem bluer than usual. His tobacco-brown wingtips had been polished to a high shine where they poked out under the hems of his pleated umber slacks, and his cheeks were ruddy with the lingering chill of the Virginia winter. He frowned at Holden, standing there barefoot in a pair of flour-speckled chinos and an undershirt that was smeared with food dye in an assortment of festive colors, and arched an eyebrow.

“You forget we had a date tonight?”

Holden rolled his eyes and waved Bill in. “No,” he groused, and wandered back into the kitchen to make a token attempt tidying up. “I got a little caught up with the cookies for Brian’s school thing and time got away from me.”

Bill followed on Holden’s heels, giving a low, impressed whistle at the carnage strewn about the usually pristine counters. There were three tin trays of sugar cookies cut in an array of Christmas shapes laid out across the stove and on the narrow strip of counter next to it. On the opposite side of the room, a box of of confectioner’s sugar had tipped over onto its side, spilling fine white powder across the laminate countertop, while a series of empty eggshells languished in their open cardboard carton. Melted butter was congealing into a golden skin at the bottom of a glass measuring cup, and a deflated paper bag of flour sank steadily toward a precariously balanced stack of ceramic mixing bowls in various sizes. Holden grabbed the topmost bowl off the stack and reached up to rub at his temple, casting a hopeless glance over the mess.

“Looks like a bomb went off in here,” Bill observed, sidling over to peer into the dish tucked in the curve of Holden’s elbow. He slid his finger through the gummy film of half-dried icing coating the inside and then sucked it clean.

Holden slapped at his wrist. “Don’t do that. You’re gonna give yourself salmonella.” 

Bill rolled his eyes and smirked at Holden around his knuckle. He leaned his hip against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest and surveying the scene. “You know, when you offered to pick up cookie duty for Nance this year, I didn’t anticipate you going full Betty Crocker on me.”

“I would hardly call this ‘full Betty Crocker,’” Holden huffed, retrieving a wooden spoon that was teetering dangerously near the counter’s edge. “I’ve been baking since noon and I haven’t finished a single cookie.”

Bill nodded to the trays on the stove, laden with bells and trees and wreaths and snowflakes and little round-edged people cut from pale sugar dough. “They look pretty finished to me.”

“Well, they’re not,” Holden snapped, turning on his heel and dropping the mixing bowl and the spoon into the sink with a clatter. He curled his hands over the lip of the counter, fingers tight while his shoulders bunched up around his ears, and cut Bill a sheepish look over his shoulder. “I keep screwing up the icing.”

“So don’t ice them.”

“Nancy always ices her cookies.” Holden frowned and shook his head, chewing at his lower lip. “I just don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I’m following the recipe exactly as it’s written down, but the icing keeps ending up so wet it soaks through the cookies and turns them into mush.”

Bill sighed, pushing up off the counter, and ambled over to where Holden was posted up in front of the sink. He pressed his palm to Holden’s back, dragging it in warm, slow strokes across his shoulderblades. “It’s a high school bake sale, baby. A couple of soggy sugar cookies aren’t the end of the world.”

“I know, I just - ” Holden sighed and shook his head again. His face was hot and he couldn’t quite bring himself to look Bill in eye when he admitted in a small, fragile rasp, “I want to do a good job.”

“Holden,” Bill murmured, curling his hand up over Holden’s collar and sweeping his thumb in gentle strokes up the back of Holden’s neck to the downy hair at his nape, “come on. Don’t be ridiculous. You’re doing a great job already.”

Holden glared at Bill and shrugged his hand off with an irritated roll of his shoulders. “I don’t need you to patronize me.” He made to march back over and collect the rest of the baking detritus but Bill caught him by the wrist, tugging firmly at the fragile joint until Holden succumbed to momentum and stumbled petulantly into the circle of his arms. He settled against Bill’s chest with a grunt, palms flat against his ribs and jaw clenched.

“I’m serious,” Bill insisted, wrapping one arm low around Holden’s waist to hold him in place and taking his chin in hand with the other. He tilted Holden’s head up until Holden met his gaze, thumb grazing the plane of his cheek. Bill’s face was soft, but serious, brow just barely furrowed over his upturned mouth. 

“Listen,” he sighed, “I know this shit hasn’t been easy. I’m not exactly the nice girl you bring home to mom. Aside from the obvious,” he flashed Holden a playful smirk and glanced pointedly down at his broad, flat frame, “I come with a lot of baggage.”

“Bill - ” Holden frowned, but Bill cut him off with a swift kiss.

“It’s all right. A divorcé in his fifties with a special needs kid and a rocky relationship with his ex-wife isn’t at the top of anyone’s wish list for potential partners, but - Holden, my son likes you. I don’t know if you get how big a deal that is. Fifteen year old boys are pretty notorious for not liking _anybody,_ and Brian is pickier than most. But he’s actually willing to hold a conversation with you, which is more than I can say for his teachers, most of his schoolmates. Hell, even me and Nancy, sometimes. She likes you too, you know.” He huffed a soft, slightly mystified laugh. “More than she likes me, that’s for damn sure.”

“It probably helps that she and I were never married,” Holden joked weakly, dragging the pads of his fingers in absent, aimless patterns over the sleek blended cotton of Bill’s sweater.

Bill tilted his head agreeably to one side, mouth curling at the corners. “Probably.” He shifted his weight and pulled Holden in until their knees brushed. His voice was a low, intimate rumble as he continued, “Point being: you don’t have to do all this.” He let go of Holden’s chin to gesture at the kitchen around them. “Drive yourself crazy making Christmas cookies to raise money for some stupid dance Brian’s probably not even going to want to go to, anyway. You’ve got nothing to prove, baby. Not to me, or Nancy, or those cackling hens in the PTA.”

“I know,” Holden sighed, though he wasn’t sure he agreed.

He and Bill had taken pains to keep their relationship discreet in the year and a half since they got together. Wendy knew, and Holden suspected that Nancy had a pretty good idea of what went on behind closed doors. She had mellowed a lot since the divorce was finalized half a decade ago and didn’t seem to mind Holden hanging around her ex-husband and her teenage son, but they were still careful to maintain appearances. They kept separate residences, even if they wound up spending nights together more often than not, and kept their hands to themselves in public, because people talked, and the things they had to say weren’t always kind.

Logically, Holden knew that cookies weren’t going to change any minds, no matter how impressive they were, but there was a part of him that couldn’t shake the notion that he could mitigate the more negative speculations concerning his and Bill’s persistent bachelorhood if he could just get this recipe right. Not that anyone would even know he was responsible. The assumption would be that Bill had stepped up to provide medicore baked goods on his son’s behalf while his ex-wife was taking care of family business, not that his boyfriend had spent an entire weekend wrestling egg whites and confectioner’s sugar into submission in the vain hopes of impressing a bunch of nosy old women whose good opinion of him didn’t really matter anyway.

Holden closed his eyes and leaned in until their foreheads brushed. Bill was right. He was being ridiculous. 

Bill’s breath was a sweet, warm current against his cheek, punctuated by the faint spice of his woodsy aftershave and the bitter, lingering notes of tobacco smoke. Holden let his hands slide up the planes of Bill’s chest and wrapped them around the back of his neck, over the collar of his sweater, nosing blindly until he caught Bill’s mouth with his own.

Bill hummed into the kiss, low and satisfied, tugging Holden in tight and stroking a possessive hand over his ribs. The tension in Holden’s shoulders unspooled and coiled away down his spine, driven out and away with every lazy pass of Bill’s palm over the thin cotton of his shirt. He opened his mouth and Bill licked past his teeth, wet and hot and claiming. Holden whimpered and pulled back just far enough to breathe, eyes half-open and stuck fast to the slick pink line of Bill’s mouth where it hovered a spare inch or so away from his own.

“Gonna be late for dinner at this rate,” Holden sighed, grinning when Bill laughed and tucked his face against Holden’s throat. He pressed a kiss just under the hinge of Holden’s jaw and Holden caught a whine under his tongue and tilted his head back to provide better access.

Bill busied himself with the exposed column for a few lazy moments, licking and nuzzling his way from one side to the other, then curled his hands over Holden’s hips and straightened up. He leaned in to lay another slow kiss against Holden’s lax mouth, still slightly swollen from the friction. Holden moaned and pushed his fingers up through Bill’s buzzed hair, content to bask in Bill’s affections as long as he allowed. 

Bill indulged him for another moment or two and then gave Holden’s waist a quick, fond squeeze and nudged him a few inches back.

“Go get dressed,” Bill instructed, nodding in the direction of the bedroom. “We can take another pass at the cookies when we get back.”

Holden hummed his disagreement, shaking his head with feigned sorrow. “I used up all the eggs in that last batch of icing.”

Bill rolled his eyes. “We’ll stop by the corner store on the way home.”

Holden smiled and slid his hands back down over Bill’s collar, patting affectionately at the center of his chest before he turned to go. Bill caught the flat of his palm sharply against Holden’s ass as he stepped away, arching an unapologetic eyebrow when Holden turned to stare over his shoulder, open-mouthed and mock scandalized.

“Five minutes,” Bill warned, “or I’m leaving without you.”

Holden scurried to the bedroom without further comment. He stripped out of his soiled undershirt and tossed it into the hamper, then dug another one out of the topmost right hand drawer of his dresser. He kicked his chinos off and swapped his lazy weekend boxers for a pair of sleek black briefs before shimmying into a pair of slate grey slacks that fit snugly over his ass and a blue silk-blend button down that he’d been told brought out his eyes. He fetched a black belt and a matching pair of shoes from the closet and sat down on the edge of his mattress to tug the latter into place.

He was doing up the buttons of his shirt cuffs when he emerged to find Bill waiting for him in the living room. A quick glance into the kitchen confirmed that he had stored the foodstuffs, given the counters a cursory wipedown, and deposited the dishes and utensils in the sink to soak while Holden was changing his clothes. Now he was sprawled out on the sofa, with his feet propped up on the coffee table — which he knew very well Holden hated — and crossed casually at the ankle.

“Seriously?” Holden waved pointedly in the direction of Bill’s legs. “You’re just gonna squander all that goodwill you accrued for cleaning the kitchen by putting your filthy shoes all over my coffee table?”

Bill heaved a hearty sigh and adjusted his position, dropping his feet to the floor with a thud.

“Thank you.” Holden inclined his head and tugged his sleeves into place. “So?” he asked, holding his arms out to his sides. “Do I pass muster?”

Bill narrowed his eyes and crooked his fingers, beckoning Holden over. Holden went, coming to a stop a foot or so in front of the sofa with his hands fisted against his hips.

“Well?”

“C’mere,” Bill said, reaching out to hook his fingers over the waistband of Holden’s slacks. 

Holden tilted his gaze heavenward but allowed Bill to reel him in without complaint.

Bill squinted up at him for a second and then announced gravely, “You’ve got something on your face.”

“What?” Holden frowned. “Where?”

“Icing, I think. Left side.” Bill waggled the fingers of his free hand in the general vicinity of his cheek.

Holden scrubbed over the offending area and then looked down at his fingers. He didn’t feel anything, or see any sugary residue. He glanced over at Bill, brow furrowed. “Did I get it?”

“No. Here, let me just - ” Bill made a little grunting noise and looped his hand around the back of Holden’s neck, guiding him down. Holden leaned over, one hand on the arm of the sofa for balance, and made a choked sound of surprise when Bill pressed a slow, sucking kiss just over his cheekbone.

“There,” Bill grinned, leaning back and licking his lips. “I think I got it.”

“You’re disgusting.” Holden scowled, pursing his mouth against a grin as he straightened up again. He tucked his sleeve over the heel of his palm and reached up to wipe away the wet patch of saliva Bill had left behind.

Bill shrugged, smiling wide and smug and not the least bit sorry, and pushed to his feet. 

“Seriously, though,” Holden pressed, gesturing at his outfit, “is this all right? I don’t want to get us kicked out of the restaurant because I didn’t meet dress standards.”

“You look great, baby.” Bill stepped in and slung an arm around Holden’s waist, nuzzling at his temple. “Good enough to eat.”

“Wow,” Holden drawled, turning to press his palm to Bill’s chest, eyes wide with judgment. “That was terrible.”

“Come on.” Bill slipped his hand into Holden’s back pocket and guided him toward the door. “You can make fun of me on the drive over. We’re gonna be late enough as it is.”

They detoured to the entryway closet so Holden could retrieve his coat and stepped out into the hall, one after the other. When the elevator door slid shut behind them, Holden reached over and grasped Bill’s hand in his own.

“I love you,” he said, leaning back against the wall and tilting his head to peer at Bill through his lashes. “Even though your sense of humor is utterly reprehensible.”

“And I love you, even though you can’t bake a cookie to save your goddamn life,” Bill replied, giving Holden’s fingers a cheerful squeeze. 

“Too soon,” Holden chided, but he was grinning when he followed Bill out into the night, snow drifting in spun sugar flurries all around them.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
